Author Interviews

In recent years, the meat packing industry has been adopting more humane treatment of livestock. And that’s thanks-- in no small part-- to one woman: Temple Grandin. In her many book, she talks about applying her own experiences as a person with autism to how animals view the world. The U.S. Department of Agriculture even uses a checklist developed by Grandin to enforce better treatment.

Laramie author and poet Lori Howe’s new book CloudShade: Poems of the High Plains, is due out on November 18. Poems from CloudShade have been nominated for a Pushcart award, and the collection itself nominated for several first-book awards. She begins our conversation by reading one of her poems called On the Ice.

CloudShade is available on the Sastrugi Press website or via her website.

Lucy Lippard writes about the role of art in society. She’s at the University of Wyoming as an Eminent Artist in Residence, and she stopped by our studios to talk with Wyoming Public Radio’s Micah Schweizer.

In her book The Lure of the Local, Lucy Lippard says everybody should take responsibility for wherever they find themselves for as long as they live there. And she says that starts with simply looking around.

In recent years, solar energy has gone from the fringe to mainstream. Solar costs have dropped dramatically while solar installations have similarly increased. Solar still provides less than 1 percent of the nation’s power, and in states like Wyoming, it’s virtually nonexistent. But many predict solar power will play a much larger role in the future.

For women, it’s never been easy breaking into male-dominated fields. That was the case for Susan Marsh. She’s the author of a new book called A Hunger For High Country. It’s a memoir about how her childhood love for nature led her to become a landscape architect for the U.S. Forest Service. Marsh is now retired and writing a natural history of Jackson’s Cache Creek. On a wildflower walk along the creek with Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards, she talked about her years of struggle during a time when the Forest Service hired very few women.

The Arapaho language is one of many indigenous languages considered endangered. But a new book of bilingual Arapaho stories attempts to help the problem by collecting hundreds of songs and prayers into one place.

A new translation is making old Viking poems accessible to general readers. The stories of gods and heroes were written down in 13th century Iceland. But for translator Jackson Crawford—who lives in Riverton—the existing English translations of the Poetic Edda were just hard to read.

Like the enormous herds wild of bison that once thundered across the west, in coming years the forests of Yellowstone may, too, become few and far between.

That’s according to the new study The Coming Climate: Ecological Impacts of Climate Change On Teton County, commissioned by the Chartour Institute. Corinna Riginos is a research ecologist and co- authored the report. She tells Wyoming Public Radio’s Caroline Ballard the data itself isn’t new – but they’re using it to make predictions about what could happen to the ecosystem and economy in Northwestern Wyoming.

In 1988 much of Yellowstone National Park was engulfed in flames. At the time a young employee and budding photographer named Jeff Henry was asked to take photos of the fire.

Over 25 years later Henry has written a book about the fires that includes numerous photographs that he took on the front lines. The book is called The Year Yellowstone Burned: A 25 Year Perspective. Henry joins us and recalls how politicians and others were critical of the Parks approach to the fires.

Award winning author Andrew Solomon will speak at the University of Wyoming on Wednesday, April 22, about his book "Far From the Tree" where he presents stories from parents who have raised children in a variety of circumstances. Some are gay, some have schizophrenia, some are dwarfs, some have autism, others are profound.

The “war on coal” is a catchphrase typically used by industry-backers to rally against the Obama administration, but in his new book, "Coal Wars," author Richard Martin, comes at the issue from the other side. In addition to being an author, Martin works for Navigant Research, one of the world’s leading clean energy consulting firms, and as he explained in an interview with Wyoming Public Radio’s Stephanie Joyce, while he sees coal’s decline as inevitable, the book is his attempt to understand what that means for people in coal country.

Devastating pine beetle and wild fire epidemics have ravaged our national forests for years. But for the most part, everyone—environmentalists, the timber industry, government agencies—have been in agreement about how to manage such problems…as wild places, not as tree farms in which forests are a crop that’s been wiped out.

A new book chronicles changes in Wyoming over the past century. Historian and photographer Michael Amundson has retaken hundreds of photos from the early 20th century. His photos, shot in 1987-88 (while he was a student at the University of Wyoming) and again in 2007-08 are studies of pictures taken by Joseph E Stimson, a commercial photographer for the state and various railroads. The book is called “Wyoming Revisted: Rephotographing the Scenes of Joseph E.

Lynne Cheney and her husband, former Vice President Dick Cheney, will be in Laramie on February 17th discussing her new book called James Madison: A Life Reconsidered. The Cheney's will discuss the book at the Marian Rochelle Gateway Center at the University of Wyoming. The discussion begins at 4 p.m.

In 1994 University of Wyoming Botany Professor Dennis Knight wrote a book about Wyoming’s landscapes and some of the challenges they may be facing. Now 20 years later, Knight is joined by other authors to provide an update. The book is called Mountains and Plain: The Ecology of Wyoming Landscapes. We spoke with Knight when he wrote his first book and today he admits to Wyoming Public Radio’s Bob Beck that some of the challenges the state faces today were not on his radar.

Last month, Wyoming’s wolves were put back on the Endangered Species list, after a court ruled that the state’s management plan was inadequate. It’s the latest battle in a long-running conflict over wolf management in the West. Author Nick Jans has been following that conflict for decades and jumped into the fray earlier this year with his new book, titled “A Wolf Called Romeo.” As he told Wyoming Public Radio’s Caroline Ballard, he wasn’t always a wolf advocate.

The book “Liar Temptress Soldier Spy” was released last month by Harper Collins. It follows four Civil War spies – and all of them are women. Karen Abbott, the book’s author and historian, spoke yesterday at the Teton County Public Library and will be leading a workshop in Nonfiction writing today. Wyoming Public Radio's Caroline Ballard spoke with Abbott about her book, and how she discovered the lives of these women.

After her divorce in the early 90s, Mary Beth Baptiste moved to Grand Teton National Park to work as a seasonal employee. Her memoir Altitude Adjustment: A Quest for Love, Home, and Meaning in the Tetons was published this Spring by TwoDot/Globe Pequot Press, and it chronicles her first years at the park.

Nina McConigley is the author of Cowboys and East Indians, and a recent winner of the PEN Open Book award. She joined Wyoming Public Radio’s Caroline Ballard to discuss the award and said the news of her win took a little time to reach her.

Wyoming author Steven Horn’s new novel The Pumpkin Eater is creating quite a stir in the world of brainy mystery literature. It recently won the 2014 Benjamin Franklin Gold Award in Mystery and Suspense. Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards sat down with Horn to find out what it was about his plotline that’s keeping readers on the edge of their seat.

Kathryn Collins is a former emergency room physician from Jackson. Her book, "How Healthy Is Your Doctor?" makes the case that by eating healthier foods and getting more exercise, people can avoid a lot of common medical problems. Collins says she decided to write the book because she wanted people to know how much power they have to impact their own health.

Author Tamara Linse grew up on ranch in northern Wyoming. She channels that experience in a new collection of short stories, ‘How to Be a Man.’ As Linse explains to Wyoming Public Radio’s Micah Schweizer, the stories grew out of her own struggles with identity and gender.

Former U.S. Forest Service employee Brian Stout was supervisor of the Bridger-Teton National Forest from 1984 to 1994 and held various other positions in the forest service for the 24 years preceding that.

Stout recently published a book called “Trees of Life: Our Forests in Peril.” He says he wrote the book because he feels that the current way of managing forests is misguided.

Author Ben Kilham has studied black bears for decades and has also raised orphan bear cubs. His new book is called “Out on a Limb: What Black Bears Have Taught Me about Intelligence and Intuition.” He spoke with Wyoming Public Radio’s Bob Beck, and said his interest in bears came by accident.

The common story behind the murder of Matthew Shepard is that he was targeted in Laramie’s fireside bar because he was gay and was the victim of a robbery. Law enforcement authorities say that Shepard was driven to the edge of Laramie and tied to a fence by Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney.

He was then pistol whipped and left for dead. But for years some say there was more to the crime then that and author Steve Jimenez has explored those rumors. His book called “The Book of Matt. Hidden Truths about the murder of Matthew Shepard” paints a different narrative.

Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden spoke with author Brot Coburn. He lives in Wilson, and his book “The Vast Unknown” is about America’s first expedition up Mount Everest. Coburn says many of the members of the expedition honed their climbing skills in Wyoming.

An Improbable Pioneer is a collection of letters by Edith Sampson Holden Healy. Edith was from a prominent Boston family, but moved to Wyoming in 1911 after she married a sheep rancher from the state. The letters describe daily life in Wyoming in the early 1900s. The book was edited by Edith’s granddaughter, Cathy Healy, who’s a writer and editor. It’s the first imprint of the Washakie Museum’s Legacy Collection, which is an initiative that hopes to encourage the preservation of family archives.